Gemini's Buy button test sends Indian shoppers straight into Flipkart's checkout

A shopper in the test who asks Gemini about a smartphone can tap Buy on a Flipkart listing ^[2][3]. A Flipkart-branded checkout opens, and the shopper finishes without leaving the AI interface ^[2][7].

Google had pitched a different screen. Earlier this year it introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol, an open standard for AI agents to deal with retailers all the way through checkout ^[8]. Google said at the time that eligible products could be bought in Gemini and AI Mode on a Google-hosted checkout ^[8]. It later added a hand-off that moves items to the retailer's own site to finish the purchase ^[9]. TechCrunch reported that the Flipkart flow appears different from the Google-hosted version, and that it is not clear what technology runs it ^[7]. It differs from the hand-off too, because the shopper stays inside the assistant ^[2][9].

The thing being pitched is a standard any merchant can adopt. The thing being done is one merchant's branded checkout on a small set of electronics listings ^[3]. A Google spokesperson told TechCrunch the company is "always testing new features and experiences to help people discover and connect with businesses more easily" ^[6]. Teams building these features tell themselves that someone who asks an assistant about a phone wants to buy it right there. Whether test users actually do that is not on the record: Google did not say how many completed an order, or how a merchant qualifies for the button ^[6].

Google plans to widen the test later in October, ahead of India's festive shopping season, one person told TechCrunch ^[4]. India is the world's second-largest internet market, with more than a billion internet subscribers, and Flipkart and Amazon compete hardest during that season, when e-commerce companies run some of their biggest sales of the year ^[13]. Flipkart did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request for comment ^[14].

OpenAI and other rivals are adding commerce to their assistants as well ^[5], so a marketplace will face this choice more than once. Two axes sort it. One is whose checkout the shopper sees, the retailer's or the assistant's. The other is how a listing gets the button: through an open standard any merchant can adopt, or through a negotiated partnership. UCP as Google announced it puts the open standard with Google's checkout ^[8]. Its later hand-off keeps the standard but sends the shopper out to the retailer's site ^[9]. The Flipkart test appears to combine a partnership with Flipkart's own checkout. Google named Flipkart this month among its partners for "agentic" shopping in India ^[7][12]. The fourth box, Google's checkout under a private deal, is empty in what Google has shown so far ^[7][8][9].

In my view a retailer should hold out for its own checkout inside the assistant, because the order is then completed on a screen with the retailer's name on it ^[7]. The tradeoff is that, on the evidence so far, that box is reached by partnership, and the only company in it is one Google part-owns ^[10].

Whichever box a team lands in, I would judge it on completed orders from assistant answers, net of returns, measured against what the same products sold through ordinary search listings.